It's a Generational Thing
by abelothe
Summary: Or, "Keeping Up With the Skywalkers". Various unordered vignettes covering three generations of one dysfunctional family. Modern AU.
1. Summer, 2008

The name on her passport read "Rey Skywalker".

She thumbed through it, all waxed paper and American iconography, and she thought that it was quite silly that it belonged to a girl born and raised in England.

Luke had asked her if she wanted to keep her old surname – the name of a lonely orphan girl, she thought. But she is not an orphan anymore and besides, she told Luke, it was not her family name to begin with. She had no family.

And yet, while she accepted the fact that she was no longer an orphan, while she happily rejected the only surname she'd ever known, it felt just plain _weird_ attaching a new name to her face. She could not help it. The passport in her hand did not belong to her. Rey Skywalker was an imaginary person.

"Skywalker" conjured up images of Luke, the distant man from the distant land of America who everyone said would be her new father. "Skywalker" was a word on too many formal papers that were a little rushed in the end (as Luke preferred she settled Arizona before the fall, before high school). "Skywalker" had a beard and a kind smile and was maybe half a century in years. He was _Skywalker_ and all the named entailed, paperwork and all.

She was not.

For one, she was a fourteen-year-old girl. To be a Skywalker was to be _him_ , and to be thoroughly associated with him. But of course, she soon remembered, he was your father now.

And she wondered, beginning to fidget the faux leather airplane seat, what would Rey Skywalker be like? Would she have American friends in the American town of Jakku who will go to American public school wit her? What would she paint her room? Would she thrive in the heat that she heard about, the heat the plagues states like Arizona?

Rey Skywalker knew these things.

The imposter on the airplane did not.

She felt like the barest impression of a person, fading in and out of various identities and realities. There was a Rey back in England who she knew so well but was more than happy to leave behind. There was another Rey – Rey _Skywalker_ – waiting in Jakku, Arizona, all mysterious and full of surprises.

Here on this plane, she was desperately trying to make the transition so she would not be a total stranger to this new girl when it landed.

Luke – her _father_ – noticed her fingers rubbing the spine of the passport in anxiety. "Do you want me to told that while we're flying?" he offered gently.

She jerked her head up before shaking it from side to side. "No thanks," she managed to say, although the small booklet felt weighted in her hands, like an object stolen from another person.

Still, Luke put a hand on her shoulder – he was fatherly like that; another reason why she was okay with being adopted by him.

"It's okay to be nervous about leaving England," he said.

Nervous? Was she really nervous? There was something being kneaded in the pit of her stomach, but it was not nervousness, at least she did not tell herself that it was.

"What about you?" she blurted out. "What about when you left Tatooine for Coruscant?"

Luke smiled sadly – a well-worn expression all too familiar whenever he talked about his past (and suddenly Rey felt quite guilty for bringing up the subject). "I was nervous. Quite. I was practically an orphan too, you know."

She nodded her head. She knew the vaguest things about his background from the too-rushed papers, but he had once elaborated in a letter that he was not raised by his birth parents. Not exactly the same situation as her, but she appreciated the way he tried to soften her experiences with comparisons to his own. "I know."

"And then, shortly before I left for college, they died." He did not turn his head, and the direct confrontation made her feel even worse. "I had to go to Coruscant alone."

She inhaled the cold, contained air deeply and was suddenly grateful for Luke's close proximity. It made her feel safe. She also felt entirely more guilty for mentioning Coruscant in the first place. She did not know exactly what happened in Coruscant, but she knew that Luke would rather let the topic quietly fade away.

He had gone so far to blur his past that he moved to Jakku "middle-of-nowhere", Arizona and adopted a random English girl.

Somehow, Luke's actions felt like an act of rebellion against something that he probably would not ever get around to telling her. Or, she pondered, an act of redemption.

She tried to comfort Luke by putting a small hand on his arm. "At least I won't be going to Jakku alone."

He smiled through that graying beard of his. "No. No, you won't."

He said this, and she felt like a daughter. Luke was fatherly – that was just a fact. From the kind eyes to the mop of once-golden hair and the way he _listened_ to others with genuine compassion, she had a hard time picturing Luke as a youth, as anyone other than a man who was such a father. But she as a daughter? As a _daughter_ , the whole implication that she had a family spanning beyond herself, and the whole idea of it was vaguely surreal.

But this is your reality now, she told herself. You are someone's child.

And between father and daughter was the ever-present mystery that was Rey Skywalker. But as the airplane flew closer and closer to a new continent, Rey Skywalker was starting to fill the faint outline of an identity and become less of a stranger.

The girl on the airplane had Rey Skywalker's passport in her hand. And she was anxious to return it to its rightful owner when she landed, this foreign American girl who would be waiting for her at the airport like an old friend.


	2. Spring-Summer, 2012

There was no personal memorabilia in Professor Leia Organa's office.

It was came across as surprising to the ignorant – there were cluttered files and paper and colored pens (especially the nice ones one sees at the dentist's office), and the general air and framed diplomas that made anyone automatically sit straighter and hope that back-to-school night went well, even though there's no back-to-school night at university. Maybe on the second visit, when one would attempt to "figure out" the teacher before she could yell at you, would the lack of personal items become more noticeable.

There were no framed photos of loved ones next to the computer monitor, no brightly colored, kitschy toys to stare at on the desk, or anything, really, that indicated interests or even a life outside of academia.

Older alumni of Coruscant University could remember a time there was an old Polaroid of two men and a younger Professor Organa carefully placed away from the doorway and a crude stick figure sketch in crayon of two people labeled "mommy and me" loving taped next to the calendar.

Professor Organa would never deny such objects once had a home in her workplace. Well, no one had ever worked up the courage to actually ask her about her past, but a quick Google search betrayed more intimate and personal details than any conversation would.

There was a short, pragmatically-written biography on the teacher's page for Coruscant University. There was a LinkedIn account with an impressive résumé. But there was also a Wikipedia page which, if any curious student were to click, divulged secrets. And if one were to venture into the second page of search results (how daring!), one would see old article titles with keywords such as 'crime', 'murder', and 'Anakin Skywalker'.

Many were quite old, archived articles dating from the eighties. Others were interest pieces written by folk with an obvious fascination for older mysteries. Several times her name popped up in conspiracy forum boards. There was much talk of her life in certain circles, the fact and the fiction constantly bleeding into each other, shading any credibility in any mention of her past.

What was known as fact, though, was that Leia Organa had been born Leia Skywalker, although that was as close as she got with her birth father. She had a twin brother, a former professor at the university, and a husband with a shady past. Some of the articles dubbed her Leia Solo or Leia Organa-Solo, foregoing the fact that she never took her husband's name in any form.

She also appeared to have had a son who attended Coruscant University for a few semesters before dropping out. His trail ran cold soon after, as recent search results for "Ben Organa-Solo" quickly flatlined.

In fact, her students had discovered, it was quite difficult to find any information pertaining to her family from the past few years. Her husband had faded into obscurity and no one was quite sure what had happened to him or what exactly had transpired between he and Leia. Her brother seemed to have become a recluse. Her son, dropped from the face of the earth. Everyone else was dead, or as good as it, their personalities slashed and grayed by existence.

But yet, Leia Organa remained. It's not that she aged badly, or that she aged particularly well - she had just simply aged. The world kept on turning. She taught classes, speaking and blinking and walking, a physical hologram. She bought groceries, paid her taxes, and lived in an empty house as if her mere existence were not a sad reminder of another time - a relic of the past in a new age that was bursting at the seams with all the troubles that had existed for the entire history of humanity.

.

"Coruscant?" Luke had asked carefully.

Rey Skywalker shifted in her seat and nodded, quite aware of the connotations. "I was accepted and – and most colleges don't have such a good astrophysics program, and –"

Luke chuckled lightly as he set the acceptance letter on the kitchen table and waved off her chatter with reassurance. "No need for excuses – you're absolutely free to attend whatever school you choose. I'm just making sure you're not attending Coruscant just to mess with me."

"Oh! Oh, no." Rey looked at the tiled floor beneath her. She would never do something for the sake of spiting Luke. She was far too grateful for that. "I just – I guess I just like it for the same reasons you did, you know?" She smiled. "Like father, like daughter."

The warm smile never faded from Luke's grayed face. "Well, I guess I'll have to call Leia eventually."

"Leia?" It took a second for Rey to realize he's talking about his estranged twin sister – Luke's family never came up often enough to leave an imprint in Rey's memory.

He nodded. "Yeah, she's a professor there – political science, though, so I don't think you'd share any classes."

Outwardly, Rey felt the pressure of a generational heritage and a little remorse for the fact that maybe this was a legacy best to stay buried. But there was an idea cupping the back of her mind, a spark of curiosity stirring at the thought of the city in California.

Luke left with his cellphone and stepped out to the dusty back porch with a slight look of nervousness, leaving Rey and her beating heart at the kitchen table.

.

Leia Organa sat her dining room table, one leg drawn over the other, a single elbow resting on the edge of the polished wood. One hand was placed brushing against a raised chin, the other with a lolled wrist and encasing a telephone. A robe draped its hems on the floor, parted to reveal pale skin. Her hair was tied high in a crown on top of a well-poised head.

Her nature dictated she pose like a princess. Thirty years ago, she would have been called royalty.

She had hung up on a brother lost to her for over a decade to discover that he had gone through a midlife crisis and adopted some random girl. It was not the girl that bothered her - Luke was probably a better parent than she ever had been to her own son - it was the fact that he seemed so intent on keeping his life sheltered away in Arizona.

There had been no specific time when she realized that her brother had condemned their relationship to estrangement. For a time in their adult lives, Leia and Luke had enjoyed the role of acting as loving siblings, supporting and relying on each other through the ridiculous nature of the hardships forced upon them. Then a decade or so later, it occurred to Leia that she could not rely on her brother at all, or at least, had not been able to in the past few years.

It was time to change that.

 _"Hello? Leia?"_

"You and Rey can come over for dinner. How does the first Saturday of September sound?"

 _"Oh, um, yeah! Yeah. That'd be great. Thanks, Leia."_

"I can even try to invite Han and Ben." She paused. "Though I can't promise they'll show."

 _"Are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, ever since - "_

"Luke, it's been too long since we've all been together as a family…" She caught a wisp of emotion in her voice and wondered why she insisted on keeping the impenetrable professor persona up in the comfort of her own home.

Her brother laughed nervously over the static of the telephone - a laugh she could only picture as belonging to an idealistic, golden-haired boy instead of stoic chuckle of a graying man. _"I hope you don't mind setting a few extra plates this year."_

"Oh, it's not Rey," Leia reassured. "Don't you ever let that dear girl think she'll ever be a burden to this family."

 _"I think you two will get along just fine. Rey can be a bit serious, but I have no doubt she'll warm up to you in no time."_

Leia hummed in approval. She had a niece! One that hopefully would not drop out of college and join a corrupt tech company on the other side of the country just to spite her.

"Now, Luke," she began, her thought process reflected in her worries. "Remember that we can't pressure this girl too much. A lot has happened to this family, a lot that…" She hesitated. "A lot of things that are our fault and a lot of things that aren't. I don't want her to think she has anything to live up to."

 _"Ah."_

She paused to let her brother continue - but silence stood stoically on the other side of the telephone. Eventually, she relented, "That's not a mistake we want to make again."

 _"We?"_ Luke chuckled.

"You, me, Han, and Anakin fucking Skywalker. And probably a ton of other people." She spat the name of her father in bitter haste, as if she wished to vomit it as quickly as possible. Although Leia did not mind the extra two syllables of an explicative to spite her dead father's spirit. She wasn't quite sure if she believed in an afterlife, but she knew that Anakin Skywalker did not deserve to rest in peace. This was a sentiment that, to her confusion, her twin brother did not share. She could almost hear him rolling his eyes at her pettiness, to which she mentally dared him to challenge her.

But Luke remained civil and turned the conversation back to his adopted daughter, a fact that infuriated Leia. He had always had a better reign on his temper.

 _"I can assure you that Rey is quite the independent young lady. I'm very proud of her."_

Leia almost shuddered. If only she felt that way about her own son.

"I can't wait to meet her, Luke," she said. Sincerely. Earnestly. Because despite her personal disputes with her son, she held no resentment towards Rey. If anything, it warmed her weary heart to know that her brother had found a purpose in raising his adopted daughter. This girl, although she was a Skywalker in name, did not carry poison in her blood.

Rey Skywalker was proof that although their family was ridiculously dysfunctional, they might not be so damned as it seemed.

Then there was another part of her that wanted to scream at Luke for dragging an unrelated child into their personal mess.

 _"It'll be good for her to know someone in Coruscant."_

"Hm. You would know how terrifying it can be for someone who's only known small towns and sand for their entire life."

 _"Well, it's not like I stayed at Uni for very long, anyways."_

Leia almost smiled at the the reference to a decades-old incident. Almost. She didn't feel like being nostalgic.

 _"And Rey spent almost fourteen years living in London - I'm not worried about her adjusting. Still, it's nice to known she'll have her crazy aunt nearby."_

"Crazy? Now why don't we let Rey decide that for herself?"

It was amazing how little siblings changed. Even after years of no contact, brother and sister could still throw light-hearted jabs at each other like it was thirty years ago.

But catching up on lost decades could wait for that fated September dinner. Leia bid Luke farewell and hung up the phone on the longest conversation they'd had in a long time.

A neice!

Her brother, a _father_!

There was a part of her that wanted to scream at Luke for dragging an unrelated child into the mess that was their family. Skywalkers did not have a good track record for raising children. She had long learned that children were not to be used as means to a selfish goal - redemption, atonement, or even hope. No one should carry that kind of baggage, much less a young child.

She had too much experience on both the receiving and yielding sides of that dangerous philosophy.


End file.
